E-Tutoring in the 21 Century HELEN W. GREEN Integrated Studies
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E-Tutoring in the 21st Century HELEN W. GREEN Integrated Studies Project submitted to Dr. Terry Anderson in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts – Integrated Studies Athabasca, Alberta August 2009 Acknowledgement This study was developed and completed with the assistance and support of a number of people. I would like to acknowledge and thank my advisor Dr. Terry Anderson who provided direction, support and assistance throughout the process. To my friends and family who were an e-mail or telephone call away and with a special thanks to my husband Neal Viger, for his constant support and assistance throughout my graduate studies. 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgement ........................................................................................................................... 2 Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 5 Tutoring........................................................................................................................................... 6 Private tutoring institutions ........................................................................................................ 8 E-tutoring ........................................................................................................................................ 9 Similarities between face-to-face tutoring and e-tutoring ........................................................ 11 Research findings related to tutoring and e-tutoring ................................................................... 12 E-Tutoring institutions using web conferencing platforms ........................................................... 14 Training for e-tutors .................................................................................................................. 17 Best practices for e-tutoring ...................................................................................................... 20 21st Century student ...................................................................................................................... 21 Synchronous and asynchronous learning ..................................................................................... 22 Synchronous learning ................................................................................................................... 23 Web conferencing platforms ......................................................................................................... 25 Open Source vs. Proprietary Web conferencing platforms .......................................................... 29 Costs of web conferencing platforms ............................................................................................ 30 Evaluation of web conferencing platforms ................................................................................... 30 Method .......................................................................................................................................... 31 Findings ........................................................................................................................................ 32 Personal experience ...................................................................................................................... 39 Personal application of E-tutoring ............................................................................................... 40 Implementation plan for converting tutoring to an e-tutoring service ......................................... 41 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 42 Appendixes .................................................................................................................................... 49 3 Abstract E-tutoring is an extended version of tutoring wherein, the pedagogical benefits of individualized teacher/learner relationship are brought online, thus affording access where both the tutor and learner can be anywhere in the world. This paper was written to provide a model and plan to solidify and expand an existing face-to-face tutoring service to an e-tutoring service for tutors and learners in the 21st century. Integral questions to be resolved were what web conferencing platform and tools would be needed to deliver this service and would e-tutoring have the potential to deliver same or better results as face-to-face tutoring. To answer these questions, theories and the research literature on tutoring, e-tutoring, and their similarities was examined. Three e-tutoring institutions were also examined: Sylvan Online, Smarthinking, and Growing Stars, these cases served to demonstrate how commercial institutions are delivering e-tutoring to learners world-wide. Particular attention was addressed towards the technical, cost issues and the features needed to deliver e-tutoring using a web conferencing platform. Finally two web conferencing platforms, Elluminate Live and Adobe Connect were evaluated using reports and studies done by a variety of experts and the author‟s own experience using the platforms. The paper concludes that there is a valid educational and business case for adding an e-tutoring service to the tutoring service. E–tutoring has the potential to reach learners of any age, anywhere in the world, sharing and growing knowledge without boundaries and thereby enhancing learning and educational opportunity. 4 Introduction Both the term tutor and tutoring have been defined in various ways. However Wood (2001) defines a tutor as one who “provides instruction and support that is contingent upon the learner‟s (potentially changing) level of domain knowledge in contexts where the tutor is challenging them to master tasks that present manageable problems; problems whose mastery promises to enhance their domain knowledge” (p.282 ). The e-prefix adds the notion of technical and communication mediation between tutor and tutee. An e-tutor interacts directly with learners to support their learning process that is separated from the tutee in time and place for some or all of these interactions (Denis, Watland, Pirotte, & Verday, 2004). This mediation may be text, audio, video, or immersive--it may also be synchronous or asynchronous. Thus e-tutoring takes many forms depending on the technical tools, skills, and learning approaches of both tutor and tutee. Tutoring is a time-honoured, research-based method of helping students succeed in their academic tasks. Tutoring is as old, at least, as Plato and Aristotle, as we know from their writings; they found tutoring a highly successful and engaging process. Today, tutoring has taken on more of a mass appeal, and the practices that make tutoring effective have been more scientifically studied and replicated. Boylan, Bliss, Conham, and Saxon in their findings from the National Study of Developmental Education concluded that tutoring has consistently been found to have a positive impact on retention, final grades in tutored courses, course completion, and graduation rates (Kruft, 2006). Private tutoring is currently an $8 billion industry; $3 billion is accounted for by e- tutoring, and is growing significantly at a rate of 12% per year (Jones, 2007). Reasons for this growth include a greater emphasis on educational standards, (Gordon, Morgan, O‟Malley, & 5 Ponticell, 2007), the combination of parents having less time with their children (Hughes, 1999), and entry into higher education and professional careers is more competitive (Davies, Quirke, & Aurini, 2002), thus creating demand for increasing amounts of formal and credentialed education. Advances in information and communications technologies; both in hardware and software, and high speed Internet access, give rise to an opportunity to further develop e-tutoring services. As Friedman (2007) makes clear in his bestselling book, The World is Flat, students today are not competing with the student sitting next to them in class, or the rival school down the road. Today‟s students are competing in a global arena. E-tutoring provides students the capacity to source knowledge and help from around the world to meet their learning needs. Tutoring The benefits of tutoring arise from one-to-one interaction between a knowledgeable and skilled individual (the tutor) and a less knowledgeable and less skilled individual (the learner). According to Vygotsky, there are a set of common principles for pre-school to adult learners that govern tutoring (Wood & Wood, 1996). Tutors serve as a bridge between learners‟ existing knowledge and skills and the demands of the new task, and provide structures or scaffolds to support the learners‟ problem solving. Scaffolding within a Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) refers to the gap between what a given child can achieve alone, their “potential development as determined by independent problem solving” and what they can achieve “through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Wood & Wood, 1996, p.5). Since its formulation, the idea of scaffolding within a ZPD has been developed, extended and criticized in different ways. These ideas are integral to later learning theories such as 6 “cognitive apprenticeships” (Collins,